Every River Phoenix Movie Ranked

Hollywood history is no stranger to the talented child actor. But out of all the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed youngsters who have lit up the screen over the decades, River Phoenix is a clear standout. A preternaturally old soul, Phoenix brought maturity and profound vulnerability to all of his roles, making every film he appears in significantly richer for his presence. As a child actor, he seemed destined for great things, and as he aged into his early 20s, he was poised to meet every expectation audiences had placed on his shoulders.

But then, suddenly, he was gone. Phoenix died of a drug overdose in 1993, when he was just 23 years old. Although he left behind the tragedy of so much potential left unfulfilled, he also gave audiences a filmography full of interesting and measured performances to enjoy. Here’s his entire catalog, ranked from worst to best (or in his case, from good but flawed to genuinely great), based on critical consensus and our own personal impressions.

Set in the early ’60s, “A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon” is a coming-of-age story that served as one of River Phoenix’s first solo starring roles. Jimmy (Phoenix) is at a crossroads: He’s just graduated from high school and is now trying to figure out what to do with his life. His dad wants him to go to business school like he did, but Jimmy kind of just wants to go to Hawaii with his girlfriend. Told over the course of one wacky night, Jimmy’s life takes some unexpected turns along the way.

Unfortunately, as far as 1980s “night of chaos” teen movies go, “A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon” is near the bottom of the heap — largely because it sat on the shelf for two years while distribution rights passed between production company Island Pictures and 20th Century Fox, resulting in a lackluster theatrical release. It may not be groundbreaking, but is its poor reputation the result of it being chronically underseen? Maybe “A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon” is due for a critical reappraisal.

With an impressive cast that includes both River Phoenix and Richard Harris, who plays his father, “Silent Tongue” is a bizarre little Western horror movie that’s best known for two things. Firstly, it’s the last completed film that features Phoenix, who died just months before its theatrical release. And secondly, it doesn’t live up to the talent of its cast.

In it, Phoenix plays Talbot Roe, a young frontiersman who is driven mad by the death of his wife. His father, Prescott (Harris), wants to help Talbot move on from his grief, and, bafflingly, he decides the best way to do that is to buy him a new wife, one who just happens to be the half-Native American sister of his bride. The end result is a film that’s artsy, but not quite as interesting as its creative team hoped it would be, and these days, its chief attraction is that it contains the last fully realized performance from a young actor staring down an untimely death.

Early on in River Phoenix’s career, he worked on two made-for-TV movies that tackled serious family issues. They weren’t quite afterschool specials in terms of melodrama, but definitely in the same ballpark. The second of these (but the first on our list) was “Circle of Violence: A Family Drama,” released on CBS in 1986. It stars Tuesday Weld as Georgia Benfield, a single mother whose life is careening out of control after her husband leaves her and her elderly mother (Geraldine Fitzgerald) moves in. Georgia doesn’t cope with the stress in the healthiest way, and she begins to take it out on her mother, with whom she’s always had a complicated relationship. But before long, this descends into full-scale elder abuse, a topic that is as horrific as it is rarely depicted in film.

Phoenix’s role isn’t particularly large: He plays the teenage son of Georgia, who isn’t exactly making her life any easier. But even though it’s a minor part in a made-for-television movie, we can still see sparks of the screen presence he would display later on in his career.

As River Phoenix grew into an adult, he began to gravitate towards more artistic, indie productions, and that’s certainly the case with “The Thing Called Love,” which was the last of his films to be released during his lifetime. (It hit theaters two months before his death.) In it, Samantha Mathis stars as Miranda Presley, an aspiring country singer, who quickly makes friends with a trio of musicians upon arriving in Nashville, played by Phoenix, Dermot Mulroney, and Sandra Bullock. 

What follows is a tumultuous journey through love triangles, unfulfilled dreams, and a sense of melancholy that is as much a product of what came after the film as anything we see on screen. It’s impossible not to view “The Thing Called Love” through the lens of Phoenix’s death, and audiences were divided by what they witnessed. Phoenix’s performance as a talented musician reflects the screen quality of actors like James Dean and Marlon Brando, but some, including Roger Ebert, felt that it “should have been seen by someone as a cry for help.”

One of the rare comedies in River Phoenix’s filmography, “I Love You to Death” also represented a departure for its director, Lawrence Kasdan, who at that point was best known for writing films such as “Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back” and “Raiders of the Last Ark.” Kevin Kline and Tracey Ullman star as Joey and Rosalie Boca, a pair of small business owners whose marriage … well, it has its problems. Namely, Joey continually cheats on Rosalie while expecting her to pick up all the slack both at home and at their shared pizza place, and Rosalie conspires with her mother Nadja to have Joey murdered. We’d suggest couples’ counseling, but frankly, it seems like that ship has well and truly sailed.

River Phoenix gets a fun — and less broody — role as Devo, an employee at the restaurant who is desperately in love with Rosalie and ends up embroiled in the outlandish plot as a way to prove his loyalty to her. Their madcap foray into attempted murder doesn’t pan out the way they had imagined, but it’s consistently entertaining to watch.

“Surviving: A Family in Crisis” is essentially an ’80s made-for-TV version of “Romeo and Juliet,” one that attempts to shine a light on the issue of teen suicide. It stars Molly Ringwald and Zach Galligan as Lonnie and Rick, a pair of teenagers who find themselves drawn to one another while dealing with adolescent trials and tribulations. The more that they connect, the more they withdraw from their families and other friends, and the more their parents become concerned about their behavior. When the two sets of parents decide that the best course of action is to separate the two, things inevitably end on a tragic note for Lonnie and Rick, as they refuse to be parted from one another.

As a young teenager, River Phoenix is relegated to the role of Rick’s younger brother Philip, who clearly idolizes him, making the ending of the film even more depressing. Since this is a Molly Ringwald/Zach Galligan vehicle, he doesn’t have a ton of screen time, but he still makes quite an impression.

Based on the narratives of “Little Nikita” and its spiritual successor “The Americans,” we estimate that one out of every 10 children in America is secretly being raised by Russian sleeper agents. Jeff Grant (River Phoenix) seems like a perfectly ordinary, all-American high school student — and to be fair, that’s how he sees himself as well. But when FBI agent Roy Parmenter (Sidney Poitier) uncovers a plot by a rogue Russian spy to assassinate other agents in the U.S., he finds himself in the strange position of having to protect Soviet assets — chief among them the Grant family, including Jeff, who is just learning about his family’s unconventional background for the very first time.

The strength of “Little Nikita” is not in the script, which is formulaic and makes some leaps of logic that Evel Knievel would be jealous of, but in its lead actors. Poitier and Phoenix are both fully committed to their performances, and their connection goes a long way in elevating the material.

“Explorers” was River Phoenix’s big-screen debut, and as far as first films go, it’s pretty fun — even if it was overshadowed in the family-friendly science-fiction arena by “Back to the Future,” released in theaters just nine days earlier. Phoenix plays Wolfgang Muller, a preteen genius whose engineering capabilities are a perfect match for the imagination of his classmate Ben (a young Ethan Hawke, also making his film debut) and the mechanical skills of Darren (Jason Presson). Together, the boys succeed in constructing their very own spacecraft, which they waste no time in launching so that they can explore the universe. Of course, extraterrestrial hijinks ensue.

With hindsight, “Explorers” casts Phoenix against what we already intuitively understood to be his type. Normally, Phoenix is the cool guy, the moody loner, the sensitive genius. Here, he’s just a little nerd — but his performance is no less endearing for being so far from what we expect out of him.

If there’s one thing that we’ve learned from “The Mosquito Coast,” it’s that whereever there’s a well-intentioned but naive dad making the decision to uproot his entire family in search of some romanticized existence in the remote jungle, far from the capitalist excesses of the United States, disaster will soon follow. Harrison Ford stars as Allie Fox, an inventor who becomes convinced that the life of his family will be significantly improved if he can get them away from America, where he’s convinced nuclear war is inevitable.

The character of Allie is just about as unlikable and tiresome as they come, but Harrison Ford uses his movie-star charm to somehow make us care about his exploits. “The Mosquito Coast” is told through the eyes of his son Charlie (River Phoenix), who puts in a thoroughly compelling performance of a boy slowly becoming disillusioned of the father he had formerly hero-worshipped.

Given that River Phoenix’s career only lasted for a few short years — a little over a decade in total, and most of that was while he was a child — it’s hard not to be impressed by the caliber of actors he worked with. (And it speaks to his talent level that several of them worked with him more than once, including Sidney Poitier.) “Sneakers” is an ensemble heist film that stars Phoenix and Poitier alongside industry giants like Robert Redford, Ben Kingsley, David Strathairn, and James Earl Jones.

Redford plays an ex-hacker running a cybersecurity team (which includes Phoenix as Carl, a young genius hacker), who is forced to go up against his old partner Cosmo (Kingsley), released from prison and on a mission to pursue his own agenda, one that is part altruism, part cyberterrorism. “Sneakers” is a fun ensemble action-comedy, and even if it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it has a solid reputation thanks to winning performances from its talented cast.

“Silent Tongue” may have been the last film he completed, but it wasn’t the last movie River Phoenix worked on before he died. He was in the process of filming “Dark Blood” when he passed away, and the project remained uncompleted for nearly two decades. But in 2012, director George Sluizer was able to take the existing footage (they were over three-quarters of the way through shooting when production was halted, so there was a substantial amount of celluloid to parse through) and cobble together a coherent cut.

So while “Dark Blood” is — technically — a completed film, its appeal has much less to do with its story than it does with audiences’ desire to see Phoenix in action one last time. It’s also worth watching to get a glimpse of Phoenix as a villain, a type of role he hadn’t taken on before in his career — here, he plays a mentally unstable, desert-dwelling widower who kidnaps a couple (Jonathan Pryce and Judy Davis) whose car breaks down.

By the time “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” came out, River Phoenix had already played Harrison Ford’s son in “The Mosquito Coast.” So it was only natural that he be tapped to play the young version of Indy himself in the flashback sequences that are peppered throughout the film, exploring Indiana Jones in his youth and, most notably, his relationship with his father (Sean Connery). (And of course, why he’s so scared of snakes, but that’s neither here nor there.) As the younger version of Harrison Ford, Phoenix is entirely believable, bringing charisma, grit, and star quality to his brief but unforgettable moments in the film. 

Fans all have their own opinions about which of the “Indiana Jones” films is the best — although the most recent two have significantly fewer supporters. And while “Raiders of the Lost Ark” is indisputably iconic, and “Temple of Doom” features Harrison Ford at his most captivating, “Last Crusade” gives the then-trilogy an emotional heart, retroactively developing the lead characters to make everything we’ve already seen from the franchise feel more rewarding.

If you hear about a movie called “Dogfight” set during the early years of the Vietnam War, your first thought is that it’s probably about pilots, sort of an indie version of “Top Gun” or something along those lines. But this Nancy Savoca-directed coming-of-age story has a much more heart-rending dogfight at its center. Savoring their last hours of freedom before being shipped off to Okinawa, a pack of Marines set their sights on attending a dogfight — their cruel name for a party where each soldier competes to bring the ugliest date. 

Eddie Lovelace (River Phoenix) invites Rose (played by Lili Taylor, so we’re clearly being asked to suspend our disbelief on the ugly front), but he quickly regrets it as he begins to develop feelings for her. While it initially seems like a typical opposites-attract story, both characters are so thoughtfully developed and expressed that we can’t help but fall in love with them.

What more can you ask for than an early ’90s River Phoenix/Keanu Reeves collaboration with loose, tentative ties to Shakespeare? “My Own Private Idaho” respectively features the two rising stars as Mike and Scott, a pair of street hustlers who embark on a long and meandering journey to reckon with Mike’s past. Mike, quietly and devastatingly in love with Scott despite the fact he isn’t actually gay, is broken as their relationship subtly changes, as it must, when Scott’s priorities start to shift.

Carrie Rickey of the Philadelphia Inquirer had nothing but praise for Phoenix, writing, “Although River Phoenix has distinguished himself as an actor ever since his second film, ‘Stand By Me’ (1986), nothing he has ever done before prepares you for his performance in ‘[My Own] Private Idaho’ as the motherless, homeless, loveless piece of human driftwood.” We have to agree with the sentiment — whether “My Own Private Idaho” proves too esoteric for some mainstream audiences, it’s impossible to deny the power of the two central actors, especially Phoenix, whose role carries greater emotional heft.

Figuring out who you are as a teenager is hard enough — imagine having to change identities every few months on top of it all. In “Running on Empty,” River Phoenix plays Danny, the eldest son of a family that has been on the run for as long as he can remember. During the turbulent 1960s, his activist parents (Judd Hirsch and Christine Lahti) became fugitives from the law after participating in the bombing of a napalm factory that unintentionally injured a janitor. To avoid being jailed, their family keeps moving, changing towns whenever it seems like suspicion might fall on them. 

It’s the only life Danny knows — but now that he’s nearing the end of high school, falling in love with fellow student Lorna (Martha Plimpton), and starting to think about what he wants for himself as an adult, it’s clear that it’s unsustainable. His performance as Danny is achingly fragile, and it led to his sole Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor.

Out of all the incredible movies in River Phoenix’s career, the most enduring is also one of his earliest. In 1986, he played Chris Chambers, a brave and thoughtful kid from the wrong side of the tracks, in Rob Reiner’s coming-of-age classic “Stand By Me.” Although the screen time is shared between the four lead boys of the film (Phoenix, Wil Wheaton, Jerry O’Connell, and Corey Feldman) as they set out on a journey to see a dead body on the outskirts of their rural hometown in 1959, it’s Phoenix’s performance that sticks with you. 

All of the performances are strong, but there’s something special about Phoenix. His quiet maturity, his leadership skills, the way he combines a rough-around-the-edges quality with such vulnerability … it’s an acting masterclass, and he’s barely 16 years old. Come for the pie-eating contest gone horribly wrong, stay for Phoenix’s soul-crushing monologue about how aware he is that everyone expects the absolute worst of him just because of his family’s background.

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